Inquisitions Incorporated
by Whiteshield Cannon Fodder
Summary: In the grim dumbness of the 41st Millennium, a ragtag bunch of misfits falls victim to a corporate scheme. Masquerading as an inquisitorial acolyte was the last place Commissar Reiner Platt ever imagined he'd end up, but now all that's left is to keep alert and on his feet. And maybe try and keep his new teammates from dying horribly.
1. In Mysterious Ways

**A/N: Here's a little disclaimer, just so you know what you're getting into.**

**I don't actually know where this came from, where it's going, or where it will end. I do know that I wanted to write it, that I had fun writing it, and that I want to write more of it. **

**Please be aware, this story is really not intended to be taken very seriously. In the same manner in which "The Death of a Guardsman" was essentially a game of _Black Crusade_ gone incredibly awry, "Inquisitions Incorporated" is an unholy fusion of _Dark Heresy_ and _Rogue Trader_, in which the hypothetical Game Master is more concerned with pounding back hard lemonade and snorting meth than having the player characters survive to see the end of the story. Of course, that's not to say the players haven't been snorting a little, too. **

**Have fun. I know they are.**

* * *

The day had taken a very strange turn for Commissar Reiner Platt.

The strangeness had begun in the barracks, during breakfast with the men. Halfway through his bowl of Emper-O's, he had caught the ratling sniper attempting to pilfer something out of the pockets of two cloaked individuals, who were sitting in a corner by themselves. After issuing the little soldier a decidedly gentle reprieve - it was far too early for serious business, after all - he had observed the ratling's would-be victims indiscreetly pointing at him and whispering in voices that were just loud enough to be noticed, but just quiet enough to remain incoherent. It then occurred to him how very suspicious these people were, and in the midst of him wondering whether he made a mistake in leaving his bolt pistol on his bedside table, the shady characters stood up and made their way over to him. They loomed ominously, as cloaked individuals are wont to do, before speaking.

"Commissar Platt," said the slightly taller one. It wasn't an inquiry; his identity was clearly known to them.

"That's me," Reiner said through a mouthful of cereal. "Er, could you gentlemen wait a minute? Most important meal of the day and all that, you know-"

"Negative. You are to accompany us at once, Commissar." Immediately Reiner disliked the speaker. Anyone who interrupted a man in the middle of breakfast was a herald of bad things to come. Not to mention, no one who didn't have a stick up their rear unironically used the word 'negative' in place of the perfectly functional 'no'. Nevertheless, such people also tended to answer to rather unpleasant and powerful authorities, so Reiner begrudgingly rose from his chair, half-walked-half-stumbled back into his personal quarters, threw his long coat over his shoulders and popped on his hat before walking back out to meet them, now three-quarters professionally dressed.

Then he took the spoon out of his mouth.

"So, gentlemen, what's the order of the day? Do the hedges need trimming? The uniforms laundering? Are the Rough Riders' horses defecating on the colonel's doorstep again? Oh, wait, don't tell me - it's the recaf, isn't it? We're getting the good stuff from that agri-world a few planets down?" Some of the guardsmen perked up immediately upon hearing that, hoping to hear good news for once. As Reiner expected, their hopes would be thoroughly dashed.

"Negative." That word again - and this time, even more stonily delivered! It appeared that he'd annoyed Mister Negative, just as he'd intended. It was anyone's guess as to whether Silent Sam to his left was equally irked. "You'll be coming with us. Your presence has been requested."

"By whom?" Reiner demanded, eyes narrowing. "Don't I deserve to know?"

"Let me rephrase that. Your presence is required."

Reiner saw the man's arm shift, hand sliding towards his hip, and knew that if he didn't comply he'd be in for quite a shock, so to speak. "Alright, no need to ruin everyone else's breakfast too. I'll be ready in a moment."

"Everything you need will be provided at your destination," said the cowled speaker, growing audibly impatient.

"I don't think you understand, good sir," said Reiner with a wry smile, and pointed down. "I haven't got my shoes on."

True to his word, it only took Reiner a moment to pull on his boots, after which he followed the shady hooded individuals out of the barracks. For a second he thought they might turn into an alley and the situation transform into a highly-rehearsed mugging. He was spared a great deal of embarrassment when no such turn occurred, and instead the duo led him to the ramp of an Aquila Lander. This confirmed his suspicions; he was being taken to meet some important personage who had the poor taste of sending these tactless hoods and didn't mind offending a commissar.

_Inquisitor,_ he thought, and made fists in the pockets of his long coat. That was never a comforting prospect.

The Lander took them up to a frigate, hanging between the recently-departed planet and its moon. In truth, 'hanging' didn't quite seem to fit what the ship was doing. Somehow, _loitering_ managed to be a far better descriptor, simply based off a feeling that rose in Reiner's gut. He had never seen a voidship loiter, but he was certain that this was what it looked like. There was a crooked air to the vessel; it simply oozed mischief, and his Schola-honed senses picked up on them at once.

It was at this point that Reiner knew he was in for something that would someday be referred to by Imperial historians as 'shenanigans, right and proper'. That was, if it would be referred to at all.

After disembarking, the cowled stooges guided Reiner along through the ship. Navigating it was a tedious process, but the same was true of most any starship, and the commissar had been on several. The monotonous going was an ordeal he was accustomed to, and he filled the way with inane chatter, specifically to irritate his guides. It was half successful - as the more talkative of the two grew more incensed, his shorter companion tried to restrain their amusement. Near the end of their journey, the poor quiet one ended up letting out a snort, to Reiner's delight. For the remaining half-hour, he began appealing to the shorter hood in his jibes, and by the time they finally arrived, he sensed that Negative was very close to clubbing him, consequences be damned.

Perfect timing, he thought as they led him down a wide, decadent hallway. Reiner could all but feel the softness of the vermilion carpeting under his boots, and was almost sorry to tread upon it. Brass arms - which he privately found rather creepy - extended from the walls and held aloft electric torches, which illuminated the portraits of what Reiner could only assume to be a rogue trader dynasty. Some of them appeared to have had senses of humor, with their portraits being obvious caricatures of what they had actually looked like. Reiner smiled at those, and returned the scowls of those who had elected to make themselves look aesthetically grim and imposing. At the end of the hallway, a pair of ornate, silver-framed doors swung open automatically, to reveal the strangest room the commissar had ever seen. Not because of its shape or furnishings, which turned out to be hardly out of the ordinary - a hexagonal chamber, overhung by a great chandelier and dominated by a long table at the end of which was a throne, facing away from the doors. The strangeness came from the people sitting at the table.

Closest to the door sat a woman of otherworldly beauty; sharp, noble features, long russet hair, piercing green eyes… and pointed ears. Reiner blinked, unsure if he was seeing right, and instinctively reached for a bolt pistol that wasn't there. The eldar narrowed her eyes venomously at the movement, and promptly looked down her nose at him - an impressive feat, given that she was sitting and he standing.

_Oh, damn it all._

It turned out to be a fortunate thing that he'd forgotten the gun, considering the room's other occupants. Across from the xenos woman was a petite brunette, who adjusted her spectacles and cast a nervous glance at Reiner. He caught it as he scanned the room, and held her gaze for a moment before looking on to the next member of this menagerie.

There, sitting stiff as a board on a straining loveseat, was a fully-armoured Space Marine. Reiner had only seen his like once before, a grim squad of Dark Angels who had annihilated the cultists they had arrived to purge and promptly absconded with some curious artifact. The commissar had thought nothing of it, more out of concern for his and his men's safety than a lack of curiosity. Still, to see an Astartes again made for an awe-inspiring sight. Or it would have, if the couch beneath him weren't inelegantly creaking in protest.

"Excuse me," said the marine in a youthful, accented voice. "This was the only chair that could bear my weight."

A number of questions trailed through Reiner's mind - 'Why hadn't he taken his armour off?' 'Why doesn't he just stand up?' 'Why would a Space Marine apologize to mortals, not to mention a xeno?' - and were promptly forgotten as he laid eyes upon the next member of this bizarre congregation. He had almost missed them, so diminutive were they in their human-sized chair, and at first he had thought there was a ratling next to the Space Marine. That assessment was soon amended by the shade of the creature's skin.

"That's a gretchin," he said out loud.

The little orkoid looked his way and waved a grimy hand in greeting. "Ey," it said, in the typical nasally, high-pitched squeak Reiner remembered well from warzones past.

Too stunned even to cry heresy, the commissar dared to turn his head further and soon regretted it. There beside the throne stood a middle-aged man with his hands clasped behind his back, wearing a tasseled coat and a power saber at his hip. The man wore a put-upon expression and looked the faintest bit nauseous. Reiner couldn't blame him, considering what was standing on the other side of the throne. Reiner had never seen one before, but he had heard the horror stories from rare survivors of clashes with them and read accounts of their nightmarish exploits during his time as a Schola cadet. There could be no doubt - on the other side of the throne stood a necron.

A single, glowing green eye in the center of its head stared emotionlessly at Reiner, who was getting the sinking feeling that the shenanigans he had been chosen to partake in were wilder and more foolish than he could ever have conceived. Lifting a metal hand, it began signing at him, but to no avail - the motions of its hands were too quick to properly decipher. That, and the surprise of having a xeno attempt to communicate with him, in addition to everything else, was all it took for him to turn around and attempt a swift and enthusiastic departure, only to find a pair of combat servitors at the door, watching him with dead expressions.

Taking a deep breath, Reiner walked around the table and sat next to the nervous woman with the glasses. He watched her fidget out of the corner of his eye, visibly wanting to make contact with a fellow human but unsure with all the strange presences in the room. A tiny, faint sound reached his ear, and it took a moment before he realized it was the woman's voice. She was speaking, but so incredibly quietly that it was somehow quieter than a whisper. He looked over at her, which seemed to finally give her the courage to speak up.

"U-um… I'm s-s-sorry, everyone, b-b-but…"

She clasped her hands and looked around, the tremble of her shoulders visible even under her heavy robes. Reiner felt terribly sorry for her, guessing that she might not be the most confident of people even on her best days. At last, she managed to continue, her voice descrescendoing mid-sentence as she voiced the thought that had been nagging at her for the past few minutes:

"Is this the right room?"

An uncertain silence reigned in the following few seconds before it was harshly broken by none other than Reiner, who, despite himself, burst out laughing. All eyes in the room were fixed on him as he bent over the table, burying his face in his crossed arms and howling with mirth. "Is-is-is…" he gasped, before leaning back and devolving into guffaws again. "Is this the right room? _Is this the right room?!_ Miss, you're in with a bunch of xenos and an Astartes crushing the life out of an innocent sofa. I hope, in the name of all that's sacred, that this is the right room, else I'll spend the rest of my life wondering _just what in the Emperor's name is going on here?!_"

He wasn't laughing anymore. The last part of the sentence was a question not so much directed as hurled at the end of the table, where the man and necron guarded the away-facing throne. As if on cue, the throne span around ridiculously, like a cheap swivel chair, and came whirling towards the table. It ended up spinning too far, and its occupant had to reach out and clumsily stop himself from completing another awkward turn. Eventually righting himself in a display that would have embarrassed the most shameless court jester for sheer lack of grace, that occupant leaned on the table and grinned.

"Well, I'm glad you asked!" exclaimed the living punchline of a man, who Reiner was quickly making out to be the architect of this misadventure. "Welcome, all, aboard my ship-"

"_My_ ship," the nauseous-looking man interrupted.

"Yes, _his_ ship. Welcome aboard _his_ ship, the _Master Baiter_."

"The what." Reiner was more unwilling than unable to believe his ears.

"My great-great-great grandfather thought it would be hilarious," grumbled the grim-faced captain. "It's aged about as well as you'd expect. I'll change it… one of these days..."

"Excuse me," the Space Marine piped up. "I don't follow."

"Moving on!" The enthroned man clapped his hands in a manner which he probably thought was businesslike. "No doubt you're all curious as to what you're doing here, and why you've been brought into a room full of your millennia-old enemies."

"I have wondered," the Eldar muttered. Her sarcasm went soaring over the excited man's head and shattered against the far wall, audible to all but him and the unaware Astartes.

"We'll begin by introducing each of you." announced the obtuse man, rising from his throne and leaving it to roll slowly away. "First, my friend-"

The sour-faced man made a strange noise in his throat.

"-My _associate_, Captain Stultividus. His Warrant of Trade is the cornerstone to this whole operation. Next to him is Agent Arnold, who I got off an absolute bargain deal from one Mister Trazyn. Lovely fellow, I'm sure, though I've never met him in person."

Reiner was having trouble reconciling the name 'Agent Arnold' with the towering necron Deathmark. It would turn out to be the least of his worries.

The swivel throne buffoon pulled a sheaf of papers from beneath the table and designated the gretchin, who was now picking dirt from beneath an overgrown toenail. "Krash, scrounger and getaway driver extraordinaire. Last survivor of Test Group CLXXVIII, spearheaded by my colleague in the Ordo Xenos, Inquisitor Schteiner."

Indeed, the clown before him was an inquisitor. Reiner sadly shelved the notion of strangling the man.

"Unfortunately, all of Krash's peers were slain in test accidents, where they stabbed themselves, shot themselves, detonated themselves, poisoned themselves, gassed themselves, set themselves on fire, _ran themselves over_, and, tragically, were picked off by ork snipers. Truly, the path to understanding is plagued by detractors."

The inquisitor shook his head gravely. Reiner, for his part, was not for a second convinced that 'ork snipers' had been responsible for the gretchins' deaths. The grot either hadn't noticed that he was being addressed or didn't care, and was now consuming the filth from under his toenail.

"...But why?" Reiner asked, in spite of himself.

The grot looked at him as if he were an idiot. "Where else it s'posed ta go?"

"Moving right along," the inquisitor snapped, attempting in vain to achieve some semblance of authority, "The master of subtlety: Brother Tatsuo, a Space Marine of the Mantis Warriors seconded to the Deathwatch. And thirded to me."

He, and he alone, chuckled at the unfunny joke. The bespectacled woman winced; Reiner, Sultividus and the Eldar facepalmed; Krash went on picking his toenails, and poor, innocent Tatsuo simply nodded solemnly.

"It is an honour to serve," he said, and left it at that.

The Inquisitor waited a few seconds, evidently hoping he would say more, before growing impatient and moving on. "Sister Vocifera of the Order Dialogous, the translator. Knows a thousand languages, yet seems to have trouble getting on in Low Gothic."

The shy woman reddened and sank into her chair, and Reiner sincerely hoped the inquisitor would stub his toe. Karma arrived a moment later when exactly that happened, with a table leg delivering the deserved smiting. The inquisitor tried valiantly to keep smiling afterward, but it was looking a bit shaky around the edges. As the detestable man hobbled onwards, the commissar shared a smirk with the eldar opposite him. It didn't last long, as she was the next victim to be introduced.

"Princess Seachran of the Arcane Vipers. Known among her kin for her great psychic prowess…" The eldar preened, until the damned Inquisitor followed up with- "and losing the majority of her fortune to Commorite gambling sharks."

"I was cheated! Cheated, I tell you!" the xenos woman shouted suddenly, taking everyone off-guard with her temper. Her cheeks flushing bright pink, she muttered "You wouldn't understand," before leaning back and folding her arms, doing her very best to pretend she hadn't lost her composure.

"And lastly, Commissar Reiner Platt. A father to his men - if a bit young to be a father - and renowned for never executing a single loyal Guardsman. Haven't got the stomach for it, eh?"

Reiner gave the inquisitor a look that crossed the line from dirty to poisonous - one he had practiced for long hours in the mirror. "I don't need to _shoot my men_ for them to follow me."

The assertion came out almost as a growl, and a bit of the inquisitor's smug excitement faltered. It didn't take long for it to return, though. "That's the idea," he said jovially. Reiner thought he could hear the stubbed toe in his voice, and got the merest smidge of satisfaction from it. "Hopefully that same philosophy will extend to this motley crew."

The silence in the room thickened as commissar, princess, Sororita, Astartes and gretchin shared glances.

"And now, last but certainly not least, myself. Inquisitor Epimetheus, your new boss, and his personal advisor, Rala'zach the Heathen Flame."

The inquisitor snapped his fingers, a previously hidden closet swung open, and the room promptly erupted into discord.

* * *

"Well, that was a faff." Reiner took off his cap and ran a hand through his hair, slick with sweat from the events that had just transpired.

"It seemed meaningful enough to me," Brother Tatsuo said generously, "though the inquisitor did meander a bit."

"Oh, he meandered, alright. Meandered right into that table leg." The commissar snorted, still in disbelief over the man's sheer imprudence and the audacity of this whole affair. Normally he wouldn't dare to speak to a Space Marine with such flippant impertinence, but dealing with Epimetheus had worn on his patience, and dealing with the other 'acolytes' was wearing on his nerves.

He had spent the last hour watching nuances of conversation fly over Brother Tatsuo's head. The marine seemed incapable of recognizing sarcasm, and misinterpreted idioms with astounding ease.

"What does it mean, for the apple to fall far from the tree?" he had asked Reiner on the way to their living quarters, the youthful curiosity in his voice at odds with its deep, resonant boom.

"Well, the saying refers to the idea that children are often like their parents. For an apple to fall far from its tree means that the child is a bit of a divergent."

"A mutant?"

"No, just someone who ends up leading a different life than their parents."

"Ah." The group had walked in silence for a few seconds. "So where does the apple come in?"

"What?"

"Why does the apple's drop site have a bearing on the child's lifestyle?"

"The apple is the child."

"A mutant?"

And on they had gone for a minute more, until Reiner at last confessed defeat. Space Marines, he concluded, might be demigods of battle, but in terms of human interactions, they were thick as orks.

That wasn't to say the other members of the group were any more socially adept. The xenos princess put a great deal of effort into ignoring everyone, as though it were her duty to do so. Given the little he knew of the eldar and their culture of arrogance, Reiner wondered if she might actually see it that way. On the other hand, the shy Sister Dialogous was a mess, seemingly always on the verge of saying something but catching herself and withholding it at the last minute. Reiner felt great sympathy for her, and wished he could say something to put her at ease - wasn't that his duty as a commissar, after all? - but reckoned that anything of the sort at this early stage would only make her even more reticent.

Contrary to both of them, the grot was cheery and talkative, happily chattering on about anything at all that caught its attention - and everything caught its attention. It didn't at all seem to mind that its current company wasn't as green as usual, nor did it appear to realize that its high-pitched squeaking didn't quite make for pleasant listening. At one point, it simply vanished without anyone noticing, and a collective sigh of relief rose from the group.

When at last they turned into the hallway where lay their supposed destination - what the rogue trader had called their sleeping quarters - they found a red-robed tech-priest standing outside the doors, fiddling with a keypad next to the door. As they neared, they were able to make out the tail-end of an angry rant. "Stupid cheap-ass system with rusty metal keys… see if I don't end up renovating this. Factoring hectopascals is what we've got going on here. Oh, hello."

"Hello," said Reiner, sounding as tired and fed up as he felt. "What's going on here?"

"Just the usual tech-idiocy," grumbled the tech-priest, her mechadendrites fiddling away at the keys. Something must have been going on there, but Reiner could not quite tell what. It looked like ineffectual rage-clicking.

"I see. And you are-"

"Engaging in some ineffectual rage-clicking. From what I gather, they had some random janitor install this keypad, because clearly the proper consecrations haven't been effectuated and the keys are grimy as all get-out. It's going to be a pain in the cogitator to clean."

"Excuse me," Brother Tatsuo cut in. "I cannot help but observe that we have a problem."

"Aptly observed, Brother," Reiner said, too dried out to infuse his voice with snark. "Any other obscure facts to point out?"

"Well," continued the Kill-Marine, "I was always taught to solve problems with the most direct solution at my disposal. Please stand aside, ma'am."

"What are you-"

The tech-priest looked on in scandalized horror as Tatsuo stepped forward and wrenched the metal door off its hinges, tidily setting it aside to let the group in. With their ability to be surprised exhausted for the day, the supposed team shuffled on into the living quarters. Reiner, last in line, glanced over at the poor red-robed woman, trying and failing to look contrite.

"Sorry about that."

"Oh, sod it," the Mechanicus adept sighed. "Omnissiah-damned thing was already a disgrace. Probably better there is no door attuned to these keys, now that I think about it. Anyway, how do you do? I'm N-37713, ex-Explorator, and your personal tech-support in the coming mission."

She held out a bionic hand in greeting, which the commissar cautiously shook. "Reiner Platt," he answered, "currently feeling like I need to sit down after the most groxshit briefing I have ever heard."

"Oh, that's just how Epimetheus is. Survive a few missions and you'll learn to roll with the punches - even if you never learn not to despise the whole business. Welcome to Inquisitions Incorporated, Commissar Platt, and let's hope you last longer than the last alleged acolytes did."

She patted him on the shoulder with a mechadendrite before scuttling off down the hall, her four bionic arachnoid legs clicking on the metal floor. Reiner grimaced and headed on into the room, expecting to meet with a tableau of awkwardness. The sight somehow exceeded his expectations.

Seachran, the princess, sat poised on a tall barstool, one leg crossed daintily over the other. It would have been dignified had she not been facing the wall a meter away. Tatsuo, oblivious to the pervasive awkwardness, was kneeling and humming a jaunty litany while polishing a knife the length of Reiner's forearm. On a nearby couch, Vocifera, who clearly knew the litany's lyrics by heart, looked like she wanted to join in, but was cut off by the sudden reappearance of Krash the gretchin, who started making up his own original - quite blasphemous - lyrics.

Meanwhile, Agent Arnold _loomed_ in the corner.

With a bewildered sigh, Reiner set about raiding the bar cabinet. Satisfied with his findings, he sat down, content to let the princess ignore him, and poured himself a hefty shot of amasec.

"By the frakking Emperor," the commissar mumbled. "Here's to moving in mysterious ways."


	2. Ere We Go

"You know that ork saying, 'Ere We Go?"

Sister Vocifera gave the tiniest of nods, while Krash grinned and clapped his hands, echoing the phrase in his reedy voice.

"I believe so," Tatsuo said thoughtfully, reflecting on occasions during which he might have heard it said. "What of it?"

"This is it," Reiner deadpanned, his eyes dull and his lips set in a grimace. "This is what they mean. 'No plan, no support, nowhere near enough information, undermanned, undergunned, and ten minutes until we're onstage. 'Ere We Go."

"Do not be so pessimistic, Commissar," the Astartes gently admonished, flicking his sword-length combat knife into a backhand grip and sliding it into its sheath. "If all goes well, we may find and eliminate our target within the week."

"You mean, 'we better hope they're in plain sight, otherwise we're going to be mucking around on this planet forever'."

"Now that you mention it, that does seem more accurate."

Reiner snorted and set about examining his new bolt pistol. Neither 'new' nor 'bolt pistol' seemed to be even remotely close to describing the weapon he now held. He'd gotten the thing handed off to him by N-37713 a scant few minutes ago, with the reassuring description of "It works. It just works." Though his faith in the God-Emperor was stalwart - albeit rather lacking in zealotry; seeing his friends get slagged by heretic meltas had made sure of that - Reiner was, in all other walks of life, a bit of a skeptic. Thus, it was with no small amount of skepticism that he studied the pistol he had been given, which was clearly not a bolt pistol.

"Sister Vocifera," he said, doing his best not to startle her.

The Sororita looked up, the beginnings of panic at being called on already surfacing on her features. Reiner smiled at her reassuringly.

"Could you tell me what this is?"

"O-oh... W-w-well, it l-l-looks to me like it m-might be a..."

"A...?" he prompted.

"...a flintlock pistol?"

"Thank the Emperor," Reiner murmured, dropping his head into his hands. "I was worried I was the only one seeing it."

* * *

_"So here's what's going to happen." Inquisitor Epimetheus motioned, and one of his hooded lackeys slid a folder across his desk towards the gathered acolytes. Wondering why the inquisitor hadn't just slid it himself, Reiner picked up the folder and looked inside, only to find it empty save for an envelope tucked into one of its folds. Brows furrowing, he opened it up, and found a handwritten note card detailing the steps of their operation._

_\- Step 1: Go to planet_

_\- Step 2: Socialize_

_\- Step 3: Find heresy_

_\- Step 4: [incomprehensible scribbling]_

_\- Step 5: Leave planet with payment_

_Reiner looked up, his stomach already turning uneasily. Epimetheus was lounging in his throne, looking for all the world like he'd written a sector-class manifesto on inquisitorial procedure and was now about to take a well-earned nap. _

_"Alright," the commissar said, finding his voice sooner than he thought he would, "Okay. Where's the real mission file?"_

_"You're holding it," said Captain Stultividus, sounding as if he'd like to be anywhere on the ship but here. "That's it. That's the file."_

_"I didn't know mon-keigh lettering could convey so much information in so few symbols," Seachran marveled, leaning over Reiner's shoulder to get a better look at the note card. Upon seeing his expression, her eyes deadened. "...Or not."_

_"Or not," Reiner echoed flatly. He showed the file to Sister Vocifera, who was too shy to ask to see it. Immediately upon reading it, beads of sweat appeared on her forehead, and she sighed in quiet despair. Turning his attention back to the inquisitor, the commissar narrowed his eyes._

_"What happened to 'Step 4: Purge heresy?'"_

_"Oh, isn't that on there?" Epimetheus yawned and waved a dismissive hand, shifting on his gilded chair to get more comfortable. "Must've gotten scrambled up while printing."_

_"It's handwritten."_

_"Semantics," the reclining man drawled, pulling his hat down over his face and continuing to speak while thusly muffled. "Now, you're to report to N-37713 for equipment requisition."_

_"We're actually going to get equipment for the mission?" Given the state of affairs thus far, Reiner was surprised. _

_One beady augmetic eye glared out from under Epimetheus's wide-brimmed hat. __"Sure you are. Now scram. I have some important business to attend to."_

_"Clearly," Reiner muttered as he and the other acolytes took their leave._

* * *

From what the commissar had gathered thus far, 'Inquisitions Incorporated' was a money-making scheme co-founded by Inquisitor Epimetheus and Captain Stultividus, with the former seeking to make additional revenue off of his inquisitorial career and the latter desperately trying to increase his profit factor. Stultividus was as poor as a rogue trader could be while still calling themselves one, the family fortune having been unwisely squandered by his forebears and leaving him with little more than the ship and a sector full of displeased debt-collectors. It took most of his remaining riches just to keep the _Master Baiter _running, and with his prospects looking grimmer by the day, he had latched on to the first chance at redemption like a starving calf to a teat. Unfortunately, that teat had been Epimetheus and his unseemly plan to monetize the work of the Holy Orders.

Of course, they wouldn't be doing the work themselves, since that would put their health at risk, and with Epimetheus being an inquisitor, he could easily acquire free labour. Unfortunately, the teams of untrained acolytes they pulled from underhives kept dying in horrible ways, so they eventually had to give in and upgrade to a group of eccentrics who had nothing better to do and hadn't the authority to decline. The current team fit that bill just about perfectly.

Platt had lost his credibility, Seachran was destitute, Krash was a lab experiment, and Vocifera's convent had easily been convinced to give her up after her social anxiety caused a comedy of errors involving a visiting hierophant, a velvet cake, a case of identity theft, a palatine being caught in her silky underclothes, and a choir boy frantically chugging holy water from a jug of dubious sanctity. 'Agent Arnold', as he had been so inappropriately dubbed, was the result of a serendipitous encounter between Epimetheus and necron Overlord Trazyn the Infinite. The resulting encounter had been a toss-up between having the ship and all its occupants kidnapped, or giving the Overlord his coat. The choice had been incomprehensible - the subsequent donation of a Deathmark, even more so. Regardless, now Epimetheus had a necron assassin at his disposal, for the terrible price of having to turn down the air conditioning in his office. The only remaining mystery was Tatsuo.

Reiner could not, for the life of him, figure out why the Deathwatch had decided to send a Primaris Reiver as a Kill-Marine into the inquisitor's retinue. Surely they would have noticed he was a crook the moment they clapped their discerning Astartes eyes on him. The only theory he could come up with was that Epimetheus had fabricated some kind of fictional situation for which he required a Space Marine in his retinue, and in an elephantine lapse of judgement, the Watch Commander in charge of negotiations had acquiesced.

How. Unfortunate.

And then there was another matter. More worrying than the idiocy, than the corruption, than the xenos, was the presence of Rala'zach. The _daemonhost_.

* * *

_"...and his personal assistant, Rala'zach the Heathen Flame."_

_The inquisitor snapped his fingers, a previously hidden closet door swung open, and the room promptly erupted into discord._

_Tatsuo, his reflexes inhumanly quick, jolted out of his sofa and unsheathed his combat knife. Seachran, who had her back turned, somersaulted into the air and landed on the table, witchblade drawn and set into a battle stance. Reiner, presently unarmed, dove under the table, and found himself face-to-face with Krash and Vocifera, the latter of whom was shaking and praying. The gretchin grinned, showing off its mouth of yellow snaggle-teeth._

_"Ain't this fun?" it cackled. Reiner blinked, and hazarded a glance out from under the table, half-hoping everyone had overreacted. Nope, that was a daemonhost, alright. The body it wore looked convincingly human enough, but it was the mess of chains, piercings and sigils covering his body that made it obvious. That, and the oppressive psychic energy that was currently threatening to grind reality away and replace the air with daemons. The only thing preventing that from happening appeared to be..._

_The closet?_

_Upon closer inspection, it was more of a locker. Not a particularly interesting locker, either. It was slightly rusted, and had dents here and there. It looked like the sort of thing Reiner himself would have used for P.T. back in the Schola. It apparently wasn't enough to fully restrain the daemon's power, as he heard a clatter above him. Seachran had fallen to her knees in shock._

_"H-how..." She struggled to find her voice, and when she did, it was filled with anger. "_You_," she snarled at Epimetheus, who raised his brows. "A daemon powerful to dismantle this ship and devour the sub-sector is being restrained by... by what? This locker!?"_

_"Hah! Your scorn is unwarranted, xenos witch - this locker is the exact one Saint Drusus was shoved into during his time as a lowly guardsman. The residual body odour of a living saint is forever ensconced within that metal box. Vulnerable though it may appear, it is in fact a pillar of sanctity and daemon-restraining energy. Hey, Rala'zach, try breaking out of there."_

_**"Could I maybe not do that?"** the daemonhost requested, in a voice that sounded disconcertingly like that of an average citizen. **"Please allow me some dignity; I'm not a godsdamned zoo exhibit. I once led a Black Crusade, you know."**_

_"Yeah, which I pretty much single-handedly stopped."_

**_"At the cost of three Astartes Chapters and a few million guardsmen."_**

_"Doesn't change the fact that I did it," Inquisitor Epimetheus said, with the nonchalance one might expect from someone talking about a weekend outing to the grocery store. "Now, to your attempted escape."_

_Rala'zach the Heathen Flame sighed in defeat, then began to squirm halfheartedly. After about five seconds of being watched in silent disbelief by the acolytes, he stopped and began mechanically reciting what was clearly a pre-written line: **"Oh, woe is me. I have been trapped by the clever and handsome Inquisitor Epimetheus, fallen for his wily schemes and gotten myself stuck in this most sacred of relics. Someone help, for I feel the blessed sweat of Saint Drusus oozing down my back, no seriously it's disgusting and why is it still there shouldn't it have dried up by now. I yearn for the freedom to spread my regime of evil and darkness upon the galaxy. Hail Chaos."**_

_"Very good, Rala'zach," the inquisitor lauded, clapping politely. "You almost made it through without ad-libbing. Now, back into the locker."_

**_"Can I leave it open?" _**_Rala'zach pleaded. **"It **_**reeks_ in there."_**

_"Sucks to be you."_

_The terrible daemonhost groaned in impotent rage as the shadows of Saint Drusus's locker engulfed him once more. The acolytes' stunned silence persisted, until at last Epimetheus broke it._

_"Look, he actually gives me really good ideas. Couldn't ask for a better advisor." _

_Captain Stultividus's hand had yet to move away from his face. __Heretical as it was, Reiner found himself almost sympathizing with the daemon's plight. To be sealed away inside a holy sanctum at the hands of a righteous agent of the Emperor was one thing. Getting stuffed into a smelly gym locker by a tit like Epimetheus was another. His musings on the nature of the worst fate yet suffered by anyone ever were interrupted by yet more words coming from the inquisitor's accursed mouth. _

_"Now, you all must a be a bit frazzled. I get it, that tends to happen when in the presence of greatness."_

_"What greatness?" Brother Tatsuo asked innocently, whereupon Reiner decided that the Kill-Marine was alright. _

_Epimetheus's eye twitched in annoyance, before he smiled indulgently and continued. __"So I'll be sending you to your quarters to think over your new situation. You've been assigned a shared living space- and before you protest, you _do _all have your own rooms. Sort of." _

_'Sort of' was worrying. Reiner did not want to be sharing a bed with a lint-eating grot. _

_"Now, off you go. Just look at the holo-maps if you're feeling lost; there's one installed on just about every floor. And do try to get along. I don't want my acolytes bickering with one another."_

Unlikely when we've got such an object of distaste to commiserate over, _thought Reiner._

* * *

The journey to their living quarters had been gratingly long, but straightforward enough thanks to Tatsuo's superb sense of direction and the assistance of the holo-maps, which were indeed present on every floor. It felt a bit like walking through history; the _Master Baiter_ was obviously not a young ship, and some of its rooms were decorated in ways that spoke to aesthetic sensibilities long gone. Cherubim swooped lazily near the high ceilings, extolling the great and probably fictional deeds of Epimetheus in their creepy monotone baby voices. At one point, Vocifera lit up when they passed by the entrance to an immense archive, but lost her glow as soon as she realized someone might have noticed. There had been doomed attempts to explain idioms to Tatsuo, and upon finally arriving, the meeting with N-37713 and some mild tech-heresy.

The living quarters were actually rather decent, all things considered, even thought there were only five rooms - one of which contained nothing but a wooden sarcophagus, which Agent Arnold refused to get into. There was also a dog bed in the main living quarters; Krash immediately claimed this as his own, and met with no contention on that matter.

They'd had all of a day to settle in and adjust to their new reality. Reiner imagined that inquisitorial acolytes tended not to form the most orthodox crews, but this was certainly pushing it. Half of this group's members were xenos, which was definitely heretical; not to mention that at least some of their orders would be the brainchildren of an actual daemon. The thought had driven him to the bar in one of the living room's corners, where he had discarded any semblance of dignity and drunk to his burdened mind's content.

He awoke to find Krash sitting on the bartop, finger-painting on Reiner's cheek. A look in the mirror revealed the Deathskulls klan symbol adorning his face; the matter of where the gretchin had found blue paint was a distant second to getting the heretical iconography off his person. The situation continued worsening when Seachran emerged from her room, saw his face and let out an undignified snort of laughter, then promptly turned a shade of beet and fled, slamming the door behind her. That had woken up the other tenants, and in a few minutes, Reiner was in the shower, listening to Tatsuo commending the grot on his finger-painting. Weren't Deathwatch marines supposed to be furiously anti-xenos? Why wasn't Tatsuo more upset with his lot?

The shower did nothing. Reiner emerged an hour later looking as if he were blushing bright blue, and the morning concluded with them being summoned to Epimetheus's office.

"'Ere We Go!" Krash exclaimed gleefully, practically bouncing up and down with excitement. "'Ere We Go!"

Reiner looked at him, curiously arching a brow. "What've you got to be so upbeat about? We're going to meet _that idiot_ and be beaten over the head with his insultingly stupid schpiel."

"Well, yeah," the gretchin cackled, "but it won't be dull, will it?"

Despite his instinctive distaste for the xenos, Reiner caught himself wishing that he'd served with more guardsmen who had that attitude. Maybe if he had, he wouldn't have landed in this situation. He struggled to push the thought away as the group made the journey back across the ship to the inquisitor's office; that kind of speculation was useless to him now and would lead nowhere. "From idle thoughts spring heresy," someone had said, and the statement hadn't stuck for no reason.

Reiner had come to expect some kind of inane sight upon entering the office, and was not disappointed. Epimetheus appeared to be battling the air conditioner, which was furiously blasting cold air into the room, and was paying the acolytes no heed. "Emperor's bowels!" he roared, shielding himself from the vicious current. "Someone give me a hand! A servitor! An adept! Anybody!"

Without a word, Brother Tatsuo ghosted forwards, seized the air conditioner on both sides, and tore it from the wall in a cacophony of grinding metal and breaking screws. Jolts of electricity crackled as they were channeled through now-defunct wiring, leaving a stunned Epimetheus to look from the broken machine to the Space Marine at his side, now placidly holding the air conditioner between his mailed hands.

"What in the Warp...?" he began, only to be silenced by the blood-red glare of Tatsuo's skull-faced helmet.

"The Emperor protects," boomed the Astartes, and dropped the air conditioner onto the expensive tiled floor with a sickening crunch.

Inquisitor Epimetheus's eye twitched. Commissar Reiner grinned.

* * *

The terrible briefing ensued. And, feeling somewhat hopeful for the first time, Reiner and the other acolytes headed off to find ex-Explorator N-37713 in her forge temple, which made up one of the towers adjacent to the bridge. As they moved through the ship's passages, the distant smell of machine oil grew stronger and stronger, until it became nearly overpowering. Accompanying the scent was a chorus of clanking metal and dull chanting, which echoed through the wide wire-littered halls. Eventually the source of the chanting came into view when the group stepped through the forge temple's doors: an army of servitors and tech-priest, transporting equipment and analyzing data for some arcane purpose. Reiner stopped a lexmechanic as the young tech-priest bustled past, a stack of data-scrolls in his still-human arms. Upon being asked where N-37713 was, he pointed almost straight upwards, and scurried away as their gazes left him. The commissar let him go; he was transfixed by the sight above.

On a metal platform precariously suspended high above the ground by metal cables, made fearsome by red light and smoke, N-37713's silhouette cast a huge shadow across the floor and over the acolytes. The ex-explorator loomed over a coffin-like worktable, mechadendrites whizzing about her with unerring precision as she assembled some unseen object. Even from so far below, Reiner could make out a leer on her face as she went ballistic on the project before her. A nervous tech-adept stood at her side, long augmetic fingers twitching as he observed her handiwork. When she spun to face him, the surprise nearly caused him to leap off the platform to his death.

"Pull the switch!" she screeched, as an electro-priest below fired up a generator that caused weir lightning to leap between its revolving spokes.

"Y-yes, honoured Magos Explorator-"

"EX-Magos Explorator!"

"Y-YES, HONOURED EX-MAGOS EXPLORATOR!" the tech-adept cried, as his servo-arm reached out to grip the aforementioned switch at one end of the platform.

Icy steam billowed from the worktable while N-37713 rubbed her hands together in glee. The platform shuddered, once again nearly sending the tech-adept plummeting to his doom, and began to descend rapidly. Reiner winced when it slammed into the floor with an echoing boom, and N-37713 stepped off towards the acolytes, the tech-priests parting before her like curtains of red robes. She reached them with a smirk on her face, arching a brow at Reiner.

"Like what you see?"

The commissar blinked in astonishment. "When you said ex-Explorator, I didn't think you meant ex-_Magos _Explorator."

She laughed. "I've never been one to plug my own work. More of a show-don't tell kind of girl, you know? Anyway, my latest project is finished. C'mon out, Trip." The tech-priestess let out a sharp whistle, and from a pile of scrap on her worktable rose-

"Oh," Sister Vocifera said, eyes widening at the tech-heresy. "A T'au drone."

"An escort drone, to be precise. You have good eyes, Sister." N-37713 smiled and knocked her fist irreverently against the drone's chassis, which had been repainted dark red and covered in the sacred iconography of the Mechanicus. "It's been heavily modified for additional use in data extraction and transmission, as well as superior sensory and digital mapping capabilities. Long story short, it's for your use during the mission."

"I see," said Reiner, doing his best to gloss over the heretical implications of using this xenotech. He had to remember that this was not the world he was used to; the Inquisition was allowed to play fast and loose with many things that would get a normal citizen burned at the stake. "Is there a, uh, instruction manual of some kind?"

"There is," N-37713 said, and beckoned to one of the servo-skulls floating nearby. It approached, carrying beneath it a dataslate, which it abruptly dropped into Reiner's hands. He fumbled with it for a moment before finally getting it right-side up, and squinted in confusion. A sea of unfamiliar symbols glowed before his eyes, interspersed with terms in Low and High Gothic, and he looked up to the ex-Explorator for an explanation. "It's partially written in T'au. We had trouble translating some of the terms, so while the drone itself is finished, the operational procedures are still kind of... mh."

_Mh!? _

A tiny, nearly inaudible voice sounded from over Reiner's shoulder. Having been trained for the exact task of recognizing when someone was mumbling as quietly as they could - usually for the sake of catching insubordinate talk - he had little trouble picking this out, even among the din of machines. He turned to look at Vocifera, and almost asked her a question before deciding against it; instead, he simply held out the dataslate to her. She seemed unsure, but his expression made it clear he would brook no argument, and so she took it. Turning back to the tech-priestess, Reiner brought up the subject they had come to discuss in the first place.

"We're supposed to be getting equipped for the mission...?" The statement became a question at the end. It was improbable that the equipment process would be devoid of some kind of inanity.

"Yes, you are!" came her reply, and Reiner felt his spirits soar. Perhaps, under N-37713's supervision, there would actually be a dispensation of gear and weaponry suitable to the potential perils ahead. A wheeled table was rolled up, and that delusion swiftly went the way of all the commissar's other hopes.

Each section on the table was marked with a paper name tag. There were, ostensibly, each of their names. The commissar stepped forwards, the corners of his mouth twitching, and picked up his tag.

'Riner', it read, and at once he knew who was behind this. Still, he felt the need to ask what was going on, and he watched N-37713's enthusiasm crumble.

"Oh, well... we _were_ going to give you proper armaments suited to each of your unique capabilities, but Epimetheus stuck his oar in and said that no group of first-timers was going to lose his valuable tech when they died. So he asked if we had some... some stuff lying around in the back room."

"I can't use any of these firearms," said Brother Tatsuo - or, as his name tag dubbed him, 'Titsoo'. He held in his massive hands a standard-issue lascarbine, far too small for his fingers to operate. "Do you not have any Astartes-grade weaponry, Magos Explorator?"

"_EX_-Magos Explorator," she hissed, and then took a little step back when she seemed to remember she was talking to a Space Marine. "Forgive me, but we do not. Until your arrival, we had no need for anything beyond standard armaments. We do, however, have these." She seized a pair of grenades with her mechadendrites and held them out to Tatsuo. After taking them and giving them a glance, he stared blankly at N-37713, as if expecting some further comment. When none came, he made it himself.

"These are anti-plant grenades."

"Ooh, well..." She toyed with one of the wires hanging from her long red sleeves. "You never know..."

"Our mission takes place in a hive city."

"You might end up in a botanical garden..."

"And need to use grenades to clear the area?" Reiner demanded, growing increasingly exasperated.

N-37713 huffed and crossed her arms. "They might be heretical man-eating plants or something. Look, I'm just trying to make the best of a dumb situation, like I know you are. I promise if you survive this mission I'll get you some better equipment, even if I have to sabotage Epimetheus's coffee machine to get him to approve it. Just... just deal with it for now, okay?"

The commissar's sympathy for her was somewhat outweighed by the inadequacy of the gear before them. At least she'd procured a custom drone for them to take along, even if it was the product of tech-heresy. "Alright," he sighed. "Okay. What's everyone else got?"

Seachran, or 'See Cran', had picked up what looked like a psychic focus. A decent offering, except for the fact that it was not at all compatible with her alien biology, and would likely fry her nervous system if implanted. When she commented as much, N-37713 groaned and offered her sincerest apologies, and promised to try and find something useful for her next time.

As usual, nothing could keep Krash down. The little orkoid had been supplied with a pair of goggles, a rudimentary hab-repair toolbox and a length of lead pipe. "Dat's well good," was how he described this bundle of treasures. "Dat's well good." Reiner snuck a glance at the grot's name tag and smirked; the Low Gothic word 'Crash' was written there, which of course was slightly incorrect, but also happened to be the correct spelling of the word Krash was named for. A mistake on top of a mistake. Ah, well.

In a cruel twist of fate, Sister Vocifera had been provided with no weapons, save for a copy of the popular Krieger romance novel, _My Wish to Generate Children with You is Only Exceeded by My Devotion to Him_. 'Reading material for Vosiferuh's trip', was the written explanation Epimetheus had so thoughtfully included in the cover page. Upon realizing what exactly she was holding, Vocifera turned scarlet, excused herself, and left at such a speed that Reiner wouldn't have been surprised to learn she'd had Battle Sister training.

There was nothing for Agent Arnold. The necron didn't seem particularly perturbed by this - or rather, didn't react in any observable way. This was because the Deathmark's current gear already far surpassed anything the _Master Baiter_ had in reserve, and even had they been in possession of something comparable, there was no way Epimetheus would let the acolytes make off with it.

And finally, the matter of Reiner's own equipment came up. He gazed forlornly at the sabre and pistol beneath his name tag, and then looked from the weapons to N-37713, then back to the weapons, and finally back to N-37713 again.

"Is this it?" he asked, sounding a bit hoarse.

The techpriestess flushed in embarrassment. "I'm afraid so. You have to understand, this upsets me as much as it does you. I'm sorry to be giving you such... junk, but I'm really hoping you can pull through so I can actually do my job and get you all fixed up with some actual gear."

"Emperor's blood, I hope so too." Reiner picked up the pistol, turning it over and making sure he hadn't mistaken it for something else. He blinked, wondering if he believed hard enough it might turn into at least an autopistol.

No such luck.

One hour later, the acolytes were loaded into a lighter and sent on their way planetside. It was during this descent that Sister Vocifera correctly pointed out that Reiner was to be using a flintlock pistol as his sidearm. About halfway through their flight, Agent Arnold suddenly decided to open a portal to another dimension and walked through it, leaving the other occupants of the lighter speechless. The portal closed curtly behind him, leaving them with minus one teammate before even touching down. A cold sweat broke out on Reiner's face as he imagined everything going up in flames the moment they stepped out of the landing craft, and his worry deepened and darkened by the second. All this idiocy because he had made a single mistake, a single slip-up in the eyes of the Commissariat. It didn't matter that it had been the moral thing to do, that the man had been acting completely sensibly; an execution had been called for, and Reiner had confirmed all their doubts when he hadn't been able to pull the trigger. Just went to show what it paid to dare to believe in this blasted age. What would his soldiers think-

The darkness in Reiner's mind froze. He focused on that thought, reeling it closer, giving it more definition as he turned it over. Indeed, what would his soldiers think of him if they saw him like this? Him, the commissar, the keeper of morale, the one whose job it was to inspire the guardsmen with him - slumped in a seat and miserably pondering the damnation to come.

Feeling something grip his finger, Reiner lifted his head from his hands and saw Krash's wide eyes staring at him, the gretchin's long, pointed nose nearly scraping his chin. Krash was gently holding the man's forefinger in his small, wizened hand, a concerned grimace revealing his disastrous dental situation.

"All good, boss?"

Commissar Reiner Platt blinked, adjusted his hat and put on a little smile. "Yeah, all good," he lied bravely, and stood up to look out the window. The great skyscrapers of the upper hive rose to meet them, like so many daggers rushing to plunge into their little craft.

"Stand ready, everyone," he breathed, holstering his flintlock pistol and casting a hard-eyed glance around at his team. "'Ere We Go."


	3. That's Our Man

_"Stand ready, everyone," he breathed, holstering his flintlock pistol and casting a hard-eyed glance around at his team. "'Ere We Go."_

Reiner's palms felt damp as the lighter's ramp slowly lowered, the ship's servos emitting an ominous whine in the process. Though he had put on a brave face for the sake of his fellow acolytes, the dread he felt was still acute. Fighting xenos and heretics was one matter. Engaging in social interactions with this crew at his back was quite another. He looked down at Krash, whose mismatched teeth were bared in an ugly smile, and sighed in resignation. Nothing for it, then.

"Let's not tarry, Commissar," rumbled Tatsuo, his powerful voice filling the small lighter and steeling Reiner's resolve.

"Yeah, let's not," he agreed, and marched down the ramp.

Immediately the sun was in his eyes, conspiring to blind him and make him wince - an inexcusable signifier of weakness to any discerning observer. Instead of averting his gaze and losing his composure, Reiner squinted bravely and clenched his teeth, resting one hand on the hilt of his sabre. The weapon looked rather nice, but had no functional upgrades, and would have a hell of a time getting through anything thicker than flak armour. He supposed it was back to bayonet tactics, then: go for the head and make the first strike count.

There to greet the acolytes was a throng of nobles, ringed by a contingent of poorly-disguised guards. Civilian clothes strained over carapace armor; Reiner noted with disapproval that one man had brought along a heavy stubber, as if it were the most banal of things to be carrying. As the acolytes' feet met the stone landing pad, a portly nobleman in ludicrously opulent attire raised both hands in welcome.

"Well met, well met, friends!" He boomed, his voice augmented by an unseen device. "A pleasure and an honour to extend our hospitality to agents of the God-Emperor's most holy Inquisition."

The Commissar's stomach did a backflip. He heard Sister Vocifera sharply suck in air through her teeth, and Seachran utter something to the effect of "Stupid mon-keigh." For once, Reiner agreed wholeheartedly with the statement.

"A pleasure to be so warmly received," he lied, his voice loud enough only to reach the apparent head of the throng and his immediate entourage. "If I may ask, my lord - what is this?"

"This?"

"Why are there so many-" Reiner held back the biting edge he was about to infuse his voice with. "Why are there so many people here?"

"Ah! A humble man, I see; unconcerned with pomp and circumstance. Unfortunately, I must now ask you to cast that humbleness aside, agents of the Inquisition. We have been informed of your coming by your superior, the honourable Inquisitor Epimetheus, and thus it is my duty as Planetary Governor to welcome you, our honoured guests, to Finis. My name is Ahnungslos."

Reiner had never been an ardent scholar of High Gothic back in the Schola, but he recognized that word. _The End_. No doubt named for being the furthest planet capable of supporting life from this system's star, but the morbid symbolism in the context of their mission was about subtle as a slap in the face. "How fortunate we are," he didn't _quite_ snarl, "to meet with such hospitality and good faith. Could we be escorted to our lodgings and given a chance to gather our bearings? Our, ah, entry into the atmosphere was a bit rough."

"Oh, by all means, by all means!" Governor Ahnungslos exclaimed, clapping his hands. "My manservant shall escort you to your quarters. I expect you'll be joining me and my friends for dinner later on?"

* * *

"Well, that's just great. Bloody frakking amazing. Horus's shiny bald head _perfect_." Reiner hissed and withdrew his hand from where he'd slammed it against the wall in anger. That'd certainly be bruising later.

"That was... inopportune," Tatsuo ventured. There was no seating accommodation in the suite robust enough to endure his armored bulk, so he was simply standing, his warrior's frame at odds with the light pink wallpaper and bowl of petunias on the table next to him. "But I am sure there is a good reason for our... public welcome."

"Oh, so am I," the Commissar growled, removing his gloves and gazing at his reddening hand in annoyance. "No wonder all the acolytes before us ate shit. Epimetheus ruined their chances before they even started. With publicity like that, any heretics will have buried themselves so deep that it'll take us years to find them, let alone root them out. By then, it'll be too late to do anything about anything."

"Unless the heretics are as stupid as the rest of you mon-keigh," Seachran said, her fingers drumming restlessly on the hilt of her witchblade. "Then they'll be just as loud and obvious as that welcome ceremony."

Reiner was on the verge of giving her a proper military dressing-down when the fanciful notion took hold and spun his thoughts around. His eyes widened as his mind began to race, considering, _considering_... "Sister Vocifera, have you figured out how to use Trip's functions?"

She started at suddenly being addressed, nearly dropping the precious instructional dataslate in doing so, but managed to catch it at the last minute and began working her fingers across its surface, adjusting her glasses to better read its contents. "Some of them. I-I've skimmed the list of functions, and they s-seem very useful and intuitive. I'll need a f-few minutes to really get something down. What is it you n-need?"

"A way to transmit a private message to N-37713. Even if _that bastard_ didn't deign to give us what intelligence he had on this world's heretical activity, he must have info stored _somewhere_, or else he wouldn't have sent us down here. N-37713 being who she is, she'll have access to all of the data on the _Master Baiter_'s cogitators. She's made it clear to us that she wants us to survive, so she'll do this for us, or we'll fail and probably die." Reiner began to pace beside the table, snatching one of the petunias and twirling it between his unbruised hand's fingers as he went. "I think you might be right, Seachran-"

"_Princess_ Seachran to you, mon-"

"Oh, shove it." Reiner ignored the expression of shock and outrage on her face and pressed his point. "That thing you said? Might be more than facetiousness to it. Look at how unsubtly the Planetary Governor handled our arrival. Anyone with half a brain cell knows that the Inquisition functions almost exclusively undercover, so naturally we can assume that either he _hasn't got half a brain cell to speak of_, or someone in his entourage advised him to make our arrival a public event. In the first case, we can assume that it'd be facile for people with heretic designs to get into his good graces, him being dumb as a rock. In the second, someone close to him is manipulating events to make us easy to track and, when it comes to it, eliminate. In either case, the figure we're looking for has no need to hide, since no one around is discerning enough to realize they're a traitor."

Reiner stopped pacing, realizing that all eyes in the room were fixed on him. Seachran's offended surprise had shifted into intrigue, and Vocifera had paused in her reading to stare at him, her shoulders tense as if he might suddenly start shouting. "Dat sounds roight smart," Krash squeaked. "Roight smart. Iz it?"

"It's a start," Reiner answered, reminding himself not to jump to conclusions. "Send the request for info to our ex-Explorator as soon as possible, Sister. I want to know if this train of thought's going places."

"Y-yes, sir!" she stammered, and quickly delved into the reading of the manual. Reiner watched her focus, intrigued by the change on her face and in her body language. When she wasn't being spoken to, there was a sharpness to her poise, her eyes keen as they flickered down the walls of text on her dataslate. Though he'd only known her for little more than a day, he suspected that her convent had made a serious blunder in giving her away. The better for this operation, then; as long as they didn't fail.

Her reading and comprehension proved efficient beyond Reiner's imagining. Within half an hour, she had translated the relevant section of the document from T'au to Low Gothic and had found out how to use Trip's picter. As soon as she'd explained it to him, the Commissar planted himself in front of the lens and recorded his request for information. Trip let out a little _boop_ sound, which confirmed that the sending was successful, and Reiner dropped onto a couch, tapping his foot impatiently. Now all that remained was to wait for the answer to arrive from N-37713. His only hope was that she'd be able to snatch the key info from under Epimetheus's nose, though, with him being... who he was, Reiner doubted his digital security was very well-guarded.

All the bureaucratic clout in the galaxy, and his biggest worry was the temperature of the air in his office. It was enough to make Reiner queasy. What he wouldn't give for a pack of lho sticks to calm his nerves.

Trip _boop_ed again. Reiner shot to his feet, walking almost tentatively towards the drone. If N-37713 really had come through, even if his train of thought had been misguided, it'd be a start. Now they had a hope of not being stuck on Finis for the rest of their (possibly quite short) lives. He reached out and pushed the button that made things go _boop_, and Vocifera flinched as the screen of her dataslate suddenly lit up. "A new file's been uploaded to the slate," she said, her stutter momentarily gone. She seemed to recognize its absence, withdrawing back into herself as soon as she saw she was in the center of attention again. The rest of the acolytes moved to stand behind her, peering at the luminous screen as she scrolled down.

"Wot's it say?" Krash asked, balancing precariously on the back of the couch.

"I'll tell you when I've read it," Reiner said, lips parted as his eyes panned down the text.

_Exacta unfulfilled... suspect activity... embezzlement?... political maneuvering... traced... positions of governmental authority._

_Oh yes,_ Reiner thought, a smirk spreading across his face. He'd make Epimetheus choke on that stupid hat of his when they got off this world. He drew back, letting out a contented sigh. Things were still awful, and they still didn't know their enemy's name, but now they had a clear idea of where to look for them. Not to mention, they'd received a golden opportunity to have a look at the government officials. If, indeed, the foe was among the planet's government, there was a chance the acolytes could meet them this very night.

"Tidy up, everyone," the Commissar ordered, striding over to a gold-framed mirror on the wall and adjusting his collar. "We have a dinner to attend."

* * *

"Have I really got to take my helmet off?"

"Yes, Brother Tatsuo. It really does need to come off; that skull mask will send the wrong message. We're trying to play along, not terrify the heretics into hiding."

"But then the enemy will know who I am!"

Seachran looked the Space Marine up and down, all nine hulking feet of him, and smirked. "I think they'll recognize you anyway, mon-keigh."

"Do you mean to tell me that they have already acquired a pict-capture of my face?"

Reiner sighed. "Whatever. Tatsuo, leave the helmet. I promise you're not going to need it. Don't Space Marines go bareheaded half the time anyway?"

Tatsuo snorted derisively. "Not the smart ones."

Reiner thought about saying something, but decided against it. He turned to the mirror, doing his new ruffled shirt up to the second-last button and brushing a belligerent lock of black hair away from his eye. He studied his reflection, running his fingers over his freshly shaven chin, and turned slightly. Nobles' raiments had been laid out in their chambers in expectation of their heeding the Planetary Governor's dinner invitation, and though some had been ridiculously garish, enough were sensible that he had been able to put together something that looked half-decent.

"Nice loot, boss," came Krash's reedy voice. "You looks like a flash git with dat on." Reiner wasn't sure how to take that, so he decided to make no comment about it, and glanced over. He barely managed to restrain a snort of laughter at the sight: Krash had looted a long, flashy coat that wouldn't have looked out of place on a rogue trader, along with what appeared to be one of those dreadful white roll-haired wigs that Imperial lawmen sometimes wore. The coat and its sleeves trailed behind him as he waddled over to the table and scrambled up on top of it to examine himself. "Dat's well good!" he exclaimed. "If only da gitz back 'ome could see me now. Shame dey all got krumped."

"You both look ridiculous."

Reiner turned his head to answer Seachran, but upon seeing her, instead let the previously-withheld laugh spill out. "Look who's talking!" he wheezed. She had apparently decided that she'd wear the clothes over her armor, rather than suffer the indignity of letting mon-keigh clothing touch her skin. She also hadn't been discerning enough to pick and choose bits of the opulent clothes, and so was wearing everything that had been laid out for her. Thankfully, they were clearly women's clothes; unfortunately, the outfitters hadn't taken into account that the Eldar woman was a few inches shy of seven feet tall, and so the garb was awkwardly stretched out over her armored body, nearly tearing in some places. "I'll warn you, _Princess_, that something is going to come off during dinner if you go like that."

"So be it," she said, raising her chin defiantly. It was a graceful, noble movement that was entirely robbed of gravitas by the deformed bulk of her attire. "I'll not stoop to your artless human customs."

"Suit yourself," Reiner snorted, wiping away a tear of mirth. "How's that helmet coming, Tatsuo?"

"Off," said a soulful tenor voice that was definitely not Tatsuo's. The Commissar spun around to see the speaker, and his jaw damn near hit the floor.

Under his skull-faced Reiver helmet, it appeared that the Primaris marine was not only handsome, but verging on _androgynous beauty_. A pair of soul-piercing dark eyes stared out at the other acolytes from under glossy semi-long raven hair. Were it not for the wires embedded in his neck, he could easily have belonged on the cover of a pleasure world mag. "...Oh, sorry," said the pretty marine, looking somewhat embarrassed. "I have not cut my hair in some time. I promise it rarely gets in my eyes, though; the wind has a way of blowing it just enough so that it parts when the situation is dire."

"I bet it does," Reiner muttered, shaking his head to refocus his thoughts. "No worries, Brother, I think you're going to be just fine. That leaves... Vocifera?"

"Oh!" Her voice from her room elsewhere in the suite, sounded panicked. "I d-don't mean to h-hold everyone up. E-excuse me, I'll be out in a m-moment!"

True to her word, she wasn't long. The Sister Dialogous emerged into the main room wearing a white silk dress embroidered with gold tassels. They were still decadent clothes for a Sororita to wear, but she looked almost plain compared to the ridiculousness of Seachran and Krash. She fought down a blush, struggling to make her eyes meet Reiner's. "S-sorry," she said quietly. "I'm ready."

"At ease, Sister," the Commissar responded, turning towards the door. "Remember yourselves while we're there. Keep an eye out for suspicious individuals, or..." It almost felt too silly to say, but given how things had gone until now, he decided it was worth putting out there. "...Or evil-looking people."

"Evil-looking?" Seachran asked, arching a brow.

Reiner sighed. "Yeah, giving off an evil vibe. Sinister whispering. Maniacal cackling. A slithering voice. Heretical symbols. Hell, mutations, even. I know it sounds absurd, but every Throne-damned thing up to this point has been pretty frakking absurd, so..."

"If it's got two 'eads, shiv it in da gobz?" Krash suggested.

Reiner opened his mouth to answer, but settled for a simple nod before striding for the door. Almost as an afterthought, he shoved the flintlock pistol through his belt, leaving it concealed behind the back of his navy blue vest, and led the acolytes out into the hallway. The Planetary Governor's manservant was there, having been on the verge of knocking on their door, and looked pleasantly surprised to see them ready. The Commissar gave him a terse smile, and without further ado, they were led to the dining hall which was to be their hunting ground.

* * *

"Ah, Commiffar," the Planetary Governor exclaimed through a mouthful of pastry when he saw the five of them enter. "Fo pleafed to fee you joining uf after all."

"The pleasure's all mine, Governor," Reiner answered, even as he let his gaze wander across the room to take in the proceedings. It was, it seemed, not so much a dinner as a dinner party. A great deal of money had evidently been dedicated to welcoming the Imperium's secret agents to Finis, in a manner as indiscreet as possible. The sight of a banner proclaiming 'WELCOME INQUISITION' had Reiner shaking his head and sighing. _Mysterious ways_, he reminded himself, as he'd had to every hour since his boarding the _Master Baiter_, and turned his attention back to the matter at hand. Their purpose in coming here would be easiest to achieve through socializing, much as he dreaded the thought of _any_ of his teammates having a go at interacting with nobility, and so, with sweat beading on his forehead, he unleashed the acolytes upon the gathering.

Seachran drifted amidst the crowd, briefly integrating herself into conversations. The nobles were cautious of her at first, but intrigued enough to listen to her. This was always short-lived, as she managed to offend them one by one with some comment about their appearance, or their posture, or their _scent_. Truly enough, the smell of expensive perfume pervaded the air of the dining hall, but it was the sort of thing one wasn't supposed to mention, out of courtesy. This was something Reiner had thought might transcend the boundaries of race, but now that he thought about it, being a corsair princess, it was possible that Seachran had never been in a position where she'd had to be respectful towards someone before. If there was to be a wake-up call in that regard, Reiner doubted these nobles would be the ones to provide it, seeing how easily she breezed from one conversation into another, uncaring of the flaming ruins she left behind.

Krash darted through legs and under dresses, prompting startled shrieks as he blazed a trail towards the snack tables. Appetizers disappeared with incredible speed, snatched by clever green fingers and vanishing between crooked yellow teeth. "We ain't got dis stuff back in deff camp," the gretchin said between bites. "Dat's well good." Reiner guessed that the point of the mission was already gone from Krash's mind, and resigned himself to only having two committed teammates.

Tatsuo made a valiant attempt at striking up a dialogue with some of the gentlemen present, but was instead swarmed with curious women, both young debutantes and older ladies - more than a few of whom were married, much to the consternation of the gentlemen the Space Marine had been trying to make contact with. Forced to weather a bombardment of questions and flirtations entirely out of his realm of expertise, Tatsuo cast a despairing glance in Reiner's direction, making discreet military signs in a request for reinforcements. The Commissar pursed his lips, weighing his options before realizing there was a pack of lho sticks lying unattended on a table near the circle of noblewomen surrounding Tatsuo, and decided that, come hell or high water, he'd be having a smoke.

"Come along, Sister," he said, lightly tugging on Vocifera's arm. "Let's go save our Astartes friend from his new admirers." His words seemed to spark some life in her; for the first time since entering the room, she exhaled, remembering to breathe, and gave the Commissar a look of utmost terror.

"I-I-I'm s-s-sorry, C-C-Commissar," she whispered. "Th-there's just, just, so many p-p-people here, I-"

"I understand, Sister. I'm with you." Reiner laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Her eyes went from it to his face; she looked afraid that he might suddenly slap her. "With any luck, we'll tie all of this up quickly and be out of here within the week. But until then, we've got to do our duty. For the Imperium and the Emperor, we're going to get in there and talk with this lot. Come, there's nothing to fear - any one of these people looks and sounds a million times more foolish than you ever could."

A smile, tiny and fleeting as a snowflake, found its way to her lips. Though it vanished almost before it arrived, she gave a tense, resolute nod, and followed the Commissar into the fray. The two of them wound their way through the crowd, eddying around the capes and heels and dresses, until they had reached the table where Reiner had spied the pack of narcotics. To prevent the women from truly encircling him, Tatsuo had backed into the table, nearly tipping it over in doing so. Deftly weaving around a pair of twins whose attention on the handsome Astartes prevented them from seeing anything else, Reiner snatched the lho sticks, jammed one of them into his mouth and lit it on one of the candelabra on the table. The smoke rising from his mouth drew some attention, and some of the young debutantes flitted over to him and Vocifera.

"Oh, Commissar," said one, "you simply must tell us about your life as an agent of the Holy Inquisition!"

"Ah, well," he prepared to answer, letting a long, smoky breath escape his lungs. "To be perfectly honest, miss, it's absolute tosh."

Clearly this was not the answer they were expecting; he heard a few scandalized gasps from some of the people within earshot, and the voice of one nobleman saying "Well, I never-!" though whether that was to him or to the remark Seachran had just made comparing his complexion to a grox's, Reiner wasn't sure.

"Oh, yeah," he said, rather content at the opportunity to indirectly besmirch Epimetheus's reputation. "I'll let you in on all our secrets." This was a complete lie; even if Reiner had intended to divulge all the the Inquisition's shady goings-on, he really didn't know much about them past their default state of operations and terrifying power to bypass Imperial bureaucracy and impose their authority on anyone, anywhere. The tale he spun for the noblewomen was one of hilarious and improbable incompetence, of panderers, philanderers, cupidity, timidity, mistakes, fakes, rhymes, mimes, tumblers, grumblers, bumblers, and fumblers. Of course, it was almost entirely made up, although he used the character of Epimetheus for much of his inspiration, and the story featured several glaring inconsistencies, but it had the intended effect: Tatsuo was partially freed from the net of feminine attention, and as soon as he saw an opening, he zigzagged off through the crowd. With Vocifera using him as a human shield, Reiner went on spinning his degrading yarn, up until the Planetary Governor called the gathering's attention.

"Esteemed highborn of Finis, we are assembled to bear the warmest of welcomes to our honoured guests from the Inquisition." A round of polite applause circulated the dining hall, to which Reiner smiled in false gratitude as a bit of him died on the inside. "I trust many of you have by now acquainted yourselves with his, hum... _colourful _entourage."

"Oi, dat's us," Krash observed from his spot on the floor, his overlong coat spread out around him and his mouth full of chocolate danish. "Boss, 'e means us."

"Congenial folk, aren't they?" Ahnungslos continued, either ignoring or oblivious to the gretchin's interjection. "We are blessed by the Emperor's Auspices to have them with us. I hope and expect that the feast tonight will be to their liking. If everyone could find a seat..."

Nothing more needed to be said. The nobles milled around the four tables (_O__dd,_ Reiner thought, _when the hall's big enough for a single long one._) searching for seats beside people familiar to them. None of them wanted to sit near Seachran, who was by now slightly contorted due to the tightness of her clothing around her armor. Next to her, Tatsuo warily eyed a sturdy-looking chair, ultimately deciding that the risk was worth it. He tentatively took a seat in it, and was on the verge of breathing a sigh of relief when its back legs gave way and the chair began to tip over. Reiner watched, dumbfounded, as the Space Marine cartwheeled backwards from his falling position straight into a jug of punch-wine that promptly went flying all over a particularly well-dressed noblewoman's white gown. This was followed by a smug comment from Seachran that the new colour suited her, and it was then up to the woman's husband to prevent her from frisbeeing her dinner plate straight at the eldar's head. Krash giggled and headed over to scavenge bits of broken wood from the wreckage of the chair.

While Reiner had his eyes fixed on this debacle, a pair of young women had decided that corrupting the shy Sister Dialogous would provide wonderful entertainment for the night, and had proceeded to spirit her away, in spite of her wordless protests, to the table where all their friends had decided to sit. The Commissar swore under his breath, but made no move to follow them, not wanting to create any more of a scene than what had already transpired. So he extinguished his lho stick and sat down next to an elderly gentleman of leisurely mien, who gave him a welcoming smile and offered a handshake, which Reiner took.

"Everyone's very pleased to see you," said the old man, his vigorous grip belying his age. "It's good to know that the Imperium hasn't forgotten about us, even tucked away here in our little corner of the sector."

"The Emperor remembers all his faithful," Reiner said dutifully, somewhat taken aback. It was... nice to be received with something other than fearful looks and dark mutterings. The arrival of the Imperial Guard rarely heralded pleasant times; then again, the presence of the Inquisition should have tipped these people off that something was amiss on Finis. Was it possible that they didn't know what the Holy Ordos's purpose was? Or perhaps they were really so obtuse as to not have put two-and-two together.

"Indeed, indeed," came the man's jovial answer, just as a musical chiming of bells pealed through the dining hall. The gathering suddenly became alert and attentive, as the doors swung open to admit a tall, thin man clad in black. "Tell me, Commissar, have you heard of the Emperor's Auspices?"

"I... can't say I have," Reiner answered, even as his eyes remained fixed on the man in black. The man's features were long, and slightly wizened, but there was nothing hunched about him. He moved with an upright grace, leading with his chest as he practically glided to stand at the head of the four tables, looking over each one with a gaze that was as close to predatory as could be ascribed to a human being's stare.

"Consider yourself lucky, then," came the elderly nobleman's answer. "You'll learn all about them in a moment."

"BLESSED BE THE AUSPICES," the black-clad man boomed, his tall, feathered hat flipping this way and that as he scoured the gathering with his serpentine gaze, "FOR 'TIS THEY WHO GRANT US ALL THE LIFE AND FORTUNE TO LIVE, GROW AND PROSPER IN THIS GOLDEN AGE OF MAN. HONOURED BE THEIR VIRTUES; HOISTED BE THEIR BANNERS; HALLOWED BE THEIR NAMES. **ALL GLORY TO THE FOUR**."

Though his voice was loud enough to boom around the dining hall with startling strength, the man was not shouting. Indeed, his voice seemed almost to slither through the air instead of carry, except for that very last part. It had echoed, unnaturally, as if there had been many speaking at once: men, women, children, and... other things.

"Do you see?" the elderly gentleman whispered, leaning over to nudge Reiner amicably. "When he speaks with the voices of the Auspices, there can be no doubt of their divinity."

_No there can't,_ Reiner thought, unsure of whether to laugh in relief or cry out in horror. Across the table, he saw Tatsuo's eyes narrow and the corners of his mouth turn downwards. Beside him, Seachran had suddenly straightened up, with a rather unsubtle sound of cloth tearing. _I'd stake my life on it - __t__hat's our man._


End file.
